How to make tanks more fun to play (devs please read)

[Giantbane]

In my mind there's basically one solution to this. Make an awesome iconic class a tank, and you'll get a bunch of people playing it.

PLD and WAR are kinda vanilla compared to the other currently available jobs, there's a bigger draw to BLM, DRG, SMN, etc ... and that's aside from the general mindset that more people want to play DPS than tanks.

If they were to add Samurai (with katana) or Soldier (Cloud) as tank jobs, I think it would be less of a problem.

[RegnumMagik]

I personally find Paladin has very little interaction from most of the bosses. For the most part, you just do your 3-hit combo and you're done. And when you're over-geared, you can nearly disregard your CD except maybe EX and t5.

What I mostly enjoy about Warrior is that there's slight more things to do. Storm's eye/path + butcher's block, using your stacks at the right time, and locking a mobile boss into a position with holmgang.

[Giyari]

I started PLD so I can help with the shortage of tanks. I am new so I make mistakes. I guess the fun for me comes from helping people who need it.

However...

The stress of PLD has turned me into a jerk to others. I once complained about a tank stacking skeletons in CT on first boss. To be honest what made me mad was that before the pull I said in alliance chat, to talk to your party if you are new to the content.

It probably didnt help that the day before a high level PLD snapped at me and called me a scrub.

It is a vicous cycle of hate that cant seem to end.

I love the job, I just cant handle the people I have to deal with in order to become better.

[TitanACU]

yay someone else crying about how this game isn't tailored to only their needs. -_- Get over it. PLD is a great job.

[lxSch]

You can't write an essay based on facts you made up.

It looks like there are more than enough tanks, while "Other" class is really underplayed - SE should make it much more fun to play.
But, there is no "Other" role in duty finder, so noone cares. Those who play dps have a lot of time to write text walls while waiting for duty to pop up.

[Klandestineone]

I like tanking with my warrior. Dat axe....but seriously, tanking can be fun. It's just the people who you run with who cause the headaches.

[Moirear]

I read the original post to this topic. Then read the rest of the thread. This sums up my opinion on how you'd get more tanks:

In my mind there's basically one solution to this. Make an awesome iconic class a tank, and you'll get a bunch of people playing it.

PLD and WAR are kinda vanilla compared to the other currently available jobs, there's a bigger draw to BLM, DRG, SMN, etc ... and that's aside from the general mindset that more people want to play DPS than tanks.

If they were to add Samurai (with katana) or Soldier (Cloud) as tank jobs, I think it would be less of a problem.

The suggestions on how to "fix" GLD/PLD would do nothing. If it's not involved enough for you, try getting all cross-class skills you can have at your disposal for PLD. This involves leveling up CNJ to 34 and MRD to 27. IMHO this makes PLD a bit more interesting to play because it provides you with a handful of new options.

Personally, I really enjoy tanking in this game, especially on WAR. It's more focused on damage reversal combined with heavy hitting than the PLD's straightforward damage mitigation.

The one thing I agree with in the original post, though, is that a lot of pre-endgame leading up to level 50 as PLD makes GLD a very boring class to start out with. Every other class and job is more interesting to play up to endgame. Pre-endgame, I found PLD quite lackluster when compared to WAR.

[Fiorana]

To be honest, you can make an awsome tank class and people will still not play it other than the people that have a tank leveled right now, its not the class itself but the baggage that comes with it. There are expectations that come with the role that can be hard to fulfill and you have to have a thick skin to deal with the people that want an easy ride but refuse to give advice.

[Wadoka]

Not to detract from your ideas, as I feel constructive feedback should be encouraged, but three decades playing MMOs is a little misleading considering MMOs didn't surface until the late 90's (UO '97 / EQ '99) so at most you could have been playing them for 17 years.

Not so. For example, the very first truly popular online RPG was the original "Neverwinter Nights", on AOL in 1991, back when AOL was still pay-by-the-hour and you maxed out (most people did this for PvP effectiveness) as a 10/11/11 F/CL/MU. I played a few hundred hours of NWN as "TP Matthew" (I was in "The Protectorate" guild) back in the day. Then, there wasn't a Trinity of roles because we all ended up playing the same exact class and the same skillset

And there were several VERY popular subscription-only TEXT-based RPG. I also played Gemstone III on GEnie (Gemstone I started in 1988, and could be played over a TELNET connection!), and DragonRealms back then - and Simutronics (Play.net) is still going as far as I know, with Gemstone IV.

My left wrist doesn't work so well any more because of all the hours I spent outside Wehnimer's Landing (GS3) or east of the Crossing (DR), typing ATT TR (attack troll) over and over and over...

[therpgfanatic]

Can I finally post again? Ok great. Stupid posting limits have prevented me from responding to anything since this morning.

I will update this post with response now.

First off, I want to clarify that I think tanks are capable of doing their role just fine. The problem has never been that tanks cannot tank.

The problem is that it's not very fun to be a tank for players such as myself who traditionally gravitate to the tank classes in MMO. I have been playing tanks since the mid 90s, in dozens of games, both Western and Eastern in origin. I have sampled tons of designs of what a "tank" is, so I am very adaptable.

And tanks not being very fun to a wide number of the playerbase is a problem for anyone that hates long wait times in Duty Finder, or difficulty finding a good tank for your FC. The root of the problem isn't about bad attitudes of other players or that the role is very stressful. Healers have that same issue and yet there are a lot more healers than tanks. The difference is that, as far as healers, the FF XIV healers Scholar and White Mage are actually more fun than your typical MMO healer.

And I don't need to play the class myself to see other players' YouTube commentary videos and guides; I can see for myself exactly what is going on. I'm gradually leveling up my Conjurer right now, so I know from first hand experience this low lv Conjurer is more fun to play and level than anything I've done in other MMOs as a healer.

I cannot say the same about Gladiators. I've been having flashbacks of my days leveling a vanilla World of Warcraft Protection Paladin, and I don't say that in a good way. So long as I live I will never level another Gladiator as they are today and I could not recommend it to anyone else.

Secondly, at no such time did I say Cover should replace Shield / Sword Oath. I said it should be a toggle similar to how the oaths work, with the ability to switch it on/off at will.

Thirdly, to those who are accusing me of being a bad player / not educated tank by spamming uncomboed Halone;

Read this chart, http://valk.dancing-mad.com/tables/enmity-tables/

Halone has the highest threat (enmity) multiplier of all Paladin abilities except Flash. Halone is a x7.5 multiplier on Shield Oath; by contrast Fast Blade is x1.5 and Savage Blade is x.4.5

But Flash cannot be spammed indefinitely, requiring the Riot Blade combo to recover MP. But Halone uses little TP and, Paladins have a much larger TP bar than MP bar.

This is very easy to understand. It's basic math guys.

Performing three non-comboed Halones generates much more threat than a Fast Blade + Savage Blade + Halone combo. This is a mathematical fact.

Sure, if you can do your combo and not drop aggro, congrats you have acquired good gear. But your solution is not realistic. Some of you have been playing since 1.0. Guys like me have not. We do not have top tier gear, and we will never get top tier gear unless we can tank for people who already have top tier gear.

And it's impossible for us new 50 tanks to hold aggro against DPS and Healers in full i90 if we do things like Halone combo. The progression is different and has unique sets of challenge you didn't have, as you progressed before everyone (literally, it seems like everyone) has full i90.

I have no control over who goes into the Duty Finder groups. And it's not like I can just abandon a party if everyone is decked in top tier gear and try to get into a group of people with similar item levels. Even if there was no penalty for abandoning duty finders three times in a row, I would be abandoning every Duty Finder because they all have people in top tier gear.

So yeah, I and others make adjustments to how we play so we can still tank. And for me that is spamming Halone and forsaking anything else but defensive cooldowns.

Maybe top tier tanks don't notice the threat issues new 50 tanks have. That doesn't change the fact it exists, and I am not alone in noticing it; there are many threads about the topic in the tanking forums here, as well as on third party sites like GameFAQs and such.

The point is that, because of the design of the Paladin, it is very hard to have fun with the class until you have invested a serious amount of time into it. And now that I hit 50, I feel very limited in what I can do because it is challenging to hold aggro when everyone is better geared than my character. As many have said, many others players expect the tank to just do their job. They don't care that we are doing our best to gear up to progress.

It's the developers job to address issues with game balance and ensure it is fun. And right now it's not very fun to be a Paladin trying to level up because nearly all abilities triggering GCD when they shouldn't (meaning things like Shield Bash are difficult to use, as enemy cast time is nearly always shorter than the GCD), the damage is low making soloing very, very frustrating AND adding to the challenges of maintaining aggro against Duty Finder groups that have 20 item levels on you.

Enmity / DPS needs increasing, and something has to be done about the GCD tying our hands. And I do very much believe tanks having more iconic abilities would increase their appeal, but the mechanical issues need to be solved, too. It'd actually be great to make both changes at once; the developers would be sending a very clear message to the playerbase that they want people to enjoy playing tanks.

PS: About Provoke. The ability needs to force the target to attack the tank for at least 3 seconds. Simply putting the tank to the top of the aggro chart is not good enough if the tank cannot generate enough threat fast enough. Every Provoke I do has to be accompanied by spamming shield lob, and it is a coin toss if I will actually maintain aggro. If it was a healer who pulled aggro I find it impossible to recover aggro with anything but Halone spamming that mob, but I have even had difficulty using Provoke to pull aggro off my own Chocobo(!).

Paladins just do not do enough burst threat, and it is due to a combination of things; low damage, most abilities not having high threat multipliers, Provoke not forcing the target to attack the tank for a set period and the GCD being much longer than it should.